Storage project

Recently I have been trying to sort out my storage issues. While I still have lots of other storage issues, as I still don't have proper storage for my blood angels or my dark angels armies. However, my main concern at the moment is my kill teams and getting them out of their butter tub storage boxes. After looking around various websites and looking at lots of different options and possibilities, at all sorts of prices, I finally settled on something more home made. I would have liked to get something like the tabletop tyrants skirmish case or the KR half case but there were several issues with this approach. The main one is pretty obvious, that of price. While the various foam storage cases are great, my KR cases have been around the block a few times and are still in good condition, they are still quite a few pennies. The second, and possibly just as big a factor, is model size. To get a foam case that is interchangeable between different armies would have meant that either I got a tray with a few big slots and things like my guard would rattle around or trays with small compartments and the likes of the Deathwatch would have to squeeze in and not fit properly. I could just get lots of different size trays and solve this issue but again that's lots of money I don't have. The other issues are not as big a deal, things like token storage and the roster cards. Also I wanted a system where I could switch around teams quickly and easily, without having to spend ages switching models from one storage to another.

After searching for a while I settled on the idea of a magnetic storage box but there were a whole multitude of options and ideas out there. In the end I decided to go for a magnetic sheet in the plastic storage trays and also magnets on the bases of the models. This was due to a convention of factors, such as weight, availably and ease of construction. So I ended up with this;

The box is a 5 layer craft storage box, with 10 sections to a layer. I took out most of the dividers on each layer, to create just a couple of sections. The top layer was dedicated to tokens, dice, tactic cards and specialist cards plus a tape measure, everything I need to play, except a board obviously.

The next 4 trays were all magnetised, more or less to the same area, only the guard box has a slightly bigger area of magnetic sheet on the right hand side, to accommodate the extra models in the guard roster. All the trays also include space for the teams data cards and faction tactic cards plus a few other print outs, such as orders, canticles and specialist ammo charts. I also have a couple of peice of paper with other details on, such as the AdMech Rad Saturation rule or the marines transhuman physiology rules on, just in case I forget.

The set up is fairly simple and easy to construct and all the necessary items were purchased of amazon, including the craft box, magnetic sheets, magnets for bases and (as yet to be applied) sticky dots for marking the models positions.

There is one slight problem with the system at the moment however. In the picture above, you can see some foam in the bottom right, this is surrounding and protecting the metal models, as they are to heavy and the magnets don't have enough power in them to hold them in place. I tried with the small rare Earth magnets I have, about 3x1mm ones but this didn't help, even with two of them. I have purchased some bigger magnets, 8x1mm, but these have yet to arrive. When they do I will try them out and see if that solves the problem. It's not much of a problem really, the guard only have 2 models that are metal and the scion\inquisition only have 6 but none of the other teams, as yet, have any at all (the scout Marine team will have quite a few!).

The other problem I ran in to was down to my miscalculated measurements. I thought I had the right depth of magnetic to go under the bases but apparently I didn't and they were a little to short to make a nice contact with the sheets in the trays. This was fixed very easily by sticking a thin sheet of card in between the magnet and the base and super glueing it all together.

It was a very quick and easy fix, that doesn't seem to have caused any issues to the overall construction.

Most of the models sit nicely on the magnetic sheets in the trays and nicely on the actual ground. A bonus to all this is that there is now a little extra weight in the bases and so the models are a little more stable on uneven ground.

The final test! I took the metal models out for this, as they would have just fallen strain out and bounced on the ground! The rest stayed firm, even with a little shake. Now I don't think that they will stay put if the box takes a proper hard bash, but I don't 0lan on taking it anywhere where it might receive such a bash. I know that the idea is to protect the models and those hard bashes are never planned but so far I'm really impressed with the box and how it works.

I plan on getting another box, with 5 more layers to house the remaining teams I have (scout Marines, elites Marines and chaos) and the teams I plan on having (grey knights and sisters of battle), giving me a system where I can chop and change which trays I take and which I leave behind, as all of them will be interchangeable with each other. Right now this does all seem a little overkill as I haven't actually played a game of kill team in months, but I'm hoping that after Christmas I will get back in to things as live settles down again with the wife going back to work but we shall see.